


Teach Me of Honest Things

by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee



Series: Son of a Spider [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (in college), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And a lot of therapy, Avocados at Law, Awesome Natasha Romanov, College, Drinking, F/M, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Matt Murdock & Foggy Nelson Friendship, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Matt the Handsome Duck, Parent Clint Barton, Parent Natasha Romanov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 09:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5823346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee/pseuds/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt's not sure what he expected out of freshman year of undergrad, but this was not it.  This was better.  </p>
<p>Featuring drunken shenanigans, hugs, convoluted metaphors, questionable life choices, and waffles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teach Me of Honest Things

**Author's Note:**

> WOW, EVERYONE, THANK YOU. Thank you so much for all of your support for 'Come on Home', it means so much to me, it really does. I hope you like this continuation of the adventures of Matt and his hodgepodge family, now featuring Foggy! 
> 
> I arbitrarily decided I wanted Matt and Foggy to be in undergrad together. Partially because the conversation they have in show canon about require language classes makes a lot more sense if you just assume they knew each other in undergrad (where there are generally required language credits), rather than just meeting for the first time in law school (where, to my knowledge, there are not typically required language credits). Also I just really wanted them to meet in undergrad.

**Teach Me of Honest Things**

            “Clint, you need to let go of me.”

            “No.”

            “Clint, people are staring. The hugging is getting weird.”

            “No.”

            “Mom? Help?”

            “Now, Matt, this is a very emotional time for us, our baby is going off to college.” She was smirking; Matt could hear it.

            “Mom, he is smothering me.”

            “Lies, I’m hugging you like any affectionate parent who’s going to miss their kid. Natasha? Group hug?”

            Natasha joined the hug. This was going on the list of things Matt needed to get back at her for.

            “I’ll be sure to tell my therapist all about this when I’m 30 and incapable of understanding healthy adult relationships.” Matt quipped, “Now could you both please let go?”

            They did, not without Natasha giving him what Matt had to assume was a deeply reproachful look. “You know he’s going to play depressing country music all the way home now, right? Your fault. All your fault.”

            Matt shrugged, unrepentant, “Could’ve been worse, I could have gone out of state. Or out of the country.”

            Natasha sighed, reaching up (finally! Finally he was taller than her! …Not that he was worried about that at all…) to comb her fingers through his messy hair. “Get your bags, Polygraph, we’ll help you find your room.”

            Clint sniffled manfully and grabbed one of Matt’s suitcases. “Gonna miss you, kid.”

            “Clint, I’m literally a drive away.”

            “A whole _drive._ How are we supposed to keep you under constant surveillance if you’re a whole _drive_ away?”

            “I really hope you’re kidding, but if you’re not, you could always have some of your flunkies go undercover and spy on me if it will make you feel better.”

            “You say that like a joke, but I only hear possibility.”

            Matt sighed. Being eighteen was rough.

…

            “Don’t traumatize my roommate.”

            “No promises.”

            “Mom, that’s not reassuring.”

            “You say like it’s supposed to be.”

…

            Natasha didn’t traumatize his roommate, mainly because his roommate was not there yet. She took this information in with her usual cool nonchalance, but Matt was pretty sure she was disappointed she wouldn’t get in an early shot of menacing whatever poor bastard Campus Life had paired him up with.

            “Mom, please stop judging my roommate for not being here yet. You’re just projecting your disappointment that you couldn’t torment the poor guy. Irritable projecting is not a good look on you.”

            “Psychology was a poor choice of elective for you,” Natasha replied coolly and Matt grinned at her.

            “Franklin,” Clint declared nonsensically.

            “What?” Matt turned his attention away from pacing out the dimensions of the room, hands skimming over every surface, feeling it out like he’d felt out Natasha’s apartment all those years ago.

            “Franklin. Your roommate,” Clint clarified, “Name’s on the door.” Natasha must have given him some sort of look because Clint scoffed, “I’m not an idiot; I read.”

            “Never said you didn’t,” Natasha said smoothly. If Matt concentrated he could hear her slide closer to Clint and squeeze his hand gently. The rasp of callous on callous told him Clint had flipped his palm over and tangled their fingers together, pulling her momentarily closer before loudly pecking her on the forehead then letting her go.

            Perhaps it was a good thing Franklin hadn’t shown up yet. Natasha would never have allowed that display of affection in front of anyone outside of the family.

            The family. Even now, years into it, the label filled Matt with a bubbly sort of warmth.

            “So, kid,” Clint and Natasha had separated; Matt could hear the slight shift in the floorboards as Clint widened his stance and planted his feet, “What box, bag, or combination thereof do we open first?”

            “Combination thereof?” Matt asked archly.

            “We didn’t want to tell you this, but some of your luggage had to be sacrificed for SHIELD’s new fusion program,” Natasha began in perfect deadpan, “PETA wouldn’t let them work with animals and people get squirrely about human experimentation, so instead of gene splicing they just mucked around with combining inanimate objects. They were running out of test subjects. Your luggage volunteered.”

            A moment of silence as they absorbed one of Natasha’s rare attempts at humor, then Clint began to clap slowly, “Nat, I’m impressed.”

            Natasha gave a pleased little hum of acknowledgement; then turned back to Matt, “So, what do we unpack first?”

…

            Matt was not nervous. He was so not-nervous he was pacing. He considered throwing on some gym clothes, heading out to check out the on-campus facilities, and just avoiding the whole issue for a few hours. Then he remembered that even if he could sense where buildings and people and inconveniently-placed-lampposts were, that did not mean that he had any idea which buildings were which. The dining hall, no problem. The gym? If it was nearby, he could track it by smell too. But he didn’t really want to risk getting lost on campus on his first day just to avoid meeting his roommate for a few measly hours.

            After all, he was going to live with the guy for the next year. He’d meet him eventually. And the meeting would be significantly _less_ weird if it happened sooner rather than later.

            Matt kept pacing.

            He wished Natasha and Clint had been able to stick around for longer. But once they had everything sorted in his half of the dorm room (including putting Braille labels on _everything_ ; Clint always had a little too much fun with the label-maker. What the man lacked in personal organization skills he made up for in sheer label-making enthusiasm.) they had had to head out. SHIELD needed them, and as Matt had pointed out with varying levels of exasperation in the months since he turned 18, he _was_ an adult now. He could mostly take care of himself.

            He considered just meditating until his roommate arrived. Then he remembered that mediating might work to help with things like bruises and sore muscles, it wasn’t the recommended cure for restlessness and social anxiety.

            Maybe his roommate wouldn’t show up? That would…actually be pretty awesome. Because no matter what his mom and Clint said, Matt was 97% sure he would drive this person away by Thanksgiving. And while them just not showing up at all would set a new record for shortest interpersonal relationship Matt had ever had, _ever_ , it would save him from weeks of guilt over wrecking yet another acquaintanceship.

            Clint and his mom aside, Matt didn’t exactly have the best track record with other people.

            He was about ready to just give up and try to find the gym anyway when the door flew open, just barely missed his face, and a person tumbled into the room.

            “Oh jesus, thank god, actually found the right room this time, and hey, roomie’s already here, hi roomie! Oh, shit, I didn’t hit you with the door did I? Or otherwise traumatize you in the past ten seconds? Because you’re giving me this wounded duck face and I really don’t know what to do with that… Okay, shutting up…being a grownup… Hey, I’m Foggy.”

            Matt blinked, completely nonplussed. “Wounded duck?” He finally forced out.

            “Ah, figures you’d focus on that part,” The person (…Foggy?) sighed, then sort of staggered into a chuckle that was only a little bit awkward. His heartbeat was all over the place; he must be nervous. Or maybe he really had run all over campus trying to find the right room, Matt thought ruefully of the earlier comment about ‘finding the right room this time’. “But no, don’t worry, you’re a very handsome wounded duck, I’m sure, all the other ducklings are suitably jealous… oh god, I’m making this worse.”

            Matt could feel his face twitching as it tried to figure out what to do with this situation. “Hi?” he tried, “I’m Matt-the-handsome-duck?”

            “Oh, great,” the guy said dryly, “Lovely to see you embrace your new identity so whole-heartedly. I’m Foggy. And an idiot. And really sorry for like 70% of what I said in the last 5 minutes.”

            “Out of curiosity, what was the 30% you weren’t sorry for?” Matt asked lightly, falling into banter despite himself.

            “Eh, mostly the parts where I introduced myself. And the swearing. I am an unrepentant user of profanity,” he said with mock grandiosity, before falling back into his regular easy tone, “Just don’t tell my mom.”   
            “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

            “Excellent. A co-conspirator. I like it.”

            Matt wasn’t 100% sure how to respond to that, but he liked the mood of this conversation and he thought he might kind of like this ‘Foggy’ guy too. So, when in doubt, change the subject and hope you come off as eccentric rather than idiotic, “So, Foggy. Not just a weather pattern anymore?”   
            ‘Foggy’ snorted, Matt could hear him begin to shift his luggage into the room, “My good man, if your parents took it upon themselves to name you ‘Franklin’, you would go by anything too. ‘Franklin’ is only cool if you’re 5 and a huge fanboy of the cartoon turtle, which, for the record, I totally was. Or if you’re an 80 year old Grandpa and most of your living family has forgotten you ever had a first name and your wife calls you ‘Mr. Nelson’ all Pride and Prejudice style and it’s not weird because you’re old and can get away with being weird and formal.”

            Matt blinked again. He was pretty sure he’d never met someone quite like Foggy. He was also pretty sure this man and Clint should never meet because the universe might explode from the sheer force of their personalities colliding. “Do you want any help with your stuff?” Matt asked instead of saying anything interesting because he was pretty sure he’d used up all his wit on the first impression.

            “Um, yeah, that’d be great, man.   Just, it’s not going to be a problem for you, is it?” Cue the requisite awkward gesture in the direction of Matt’s glasses.

            “Well, as long as you don’t mind me putting your posters up upside down and not color-coordinating your sock drawer, I think we’re good,” Matt deadpanned in that way he’d learned from Natasha, the cool, forceful way that could be read as humor for a friend or as a swift slap to the wrist for any asshole who thought they’d try being patronizing. Because of course Foggy had noticed. He had to have. Campus Life probably sent him an email weeks ago double-checking that he was okay with a blind roommate. Like sitting on an exit row on an airplane. _If you are unwilling or unable to complete these tasks, let the nearest flight attendant know…_

            Foggy, of course, took Matt’s words as a joke and laughed accordingly. Matt could feel an involuntary smile creeping across his face.

            “Don’t worry about the posters, but I have high expectations of that sock drawer. I expect chaos, Matt, chaos!”

            And Matt surprised even himself by laughing, pure and simple.

…

            “So your roommate’s clean.”

            “Already knew that, Clint, but good to know,” Matt sighed into the phone’s speakers, wincing when it came back as static, “I thought the deal was you guys would hold off on invading the privacy of my friends?” Admittedly, that was always a more theoretical rule than a practical one, as Matt had never really held onto friends his own age for very long. Or at all.

            Okay, so he’d never had a best or even long-term friend before, unless Phil counted and he didn’t think a pseudo-uncle counted.

            But now there was Foggy. And yeah, they’d only known each other for a few weeks, but he was like literally no one Matt had ever known and Matt didn’t know which way was up half they time they spoke but the other half seemed…meaningful. Like, share-your-darkest-secrets-but-pretend-it’s-no-big-deal meaningful. And beyond that…it was just…nice. Really fucking nice. And fun. And nice, dammit. Having someone to just spend time with.

            Of course, Foggy snored like a chainsaw and Matt kind of wanted to smother him in his sleep most nights, but that could be meditated through.

            “Yeah, no, kid, I don’t remember agreeing to that…” Clint hedged, the phone connection somehow managing to exaggerate his already exaggerated terrible-liar tone, and oh yeah, they were kind of having a conversation.

            Matt tapped his fingers impatiently against the phone, “Liar.”

            “I’m a spy, it’s in the job description.”

            “Covert ops.”

            “What?”

            “Covert ops. You’re not a spy. You are the least subtle person on the planet and you can’t lie for shit. You’re not a spy, you just shoot stuff and occasionally do a backflip.”

            “Hey, you can’t tell me what I can and can’t do!” Clint cried, full of mock righteous indignation.

            “Can. Did,” Matt said smugly and flopped onto his bed, phone still wedged against his ear.

            “Worst. Child. Ever.”

            “Not a child anymore,” Matt pointed out.

            “Nope. Once you’ve fed someone’s sniffly twelve-year-old face chicken soup during flu season and put up with every thirteen-year-old Life’s Not Fair speech known to man, that person will officially never be a grownup in your eyes. Your illness-prone, free-speech-abusing preteen self has condemned you, kiddo. You will always be a munchkin to me.”

            “Watch it, I’ll be taller than you someday,” Matt groused.

            “Not likely.”

            “How do you know? It could happen.”

            “And that, my young padawan, is why you’ll never be a grownup to me.”

            “Because I’m not taller than you?”

            “Because you’re still _invested_ in the _idea_ of being taller than me.”

            Matt heaved a sigh, “You’ve really been working on your sage-mentor voice, haven’t you?”

            “Yep. Is it working? Life’s really boring with Nat on a mission and you out of the house. I need some excitement. Maybe I’ll go pick a fight with some mobsters. Or adopt a dog. Hey, I could get you a seeing-eye dog!”

            “Clint. No.”

            “Clint, yes!”

            “Clint, you are an infant.”

            “Aw, there’s that condescending thirteen-year-old I’ve been missing. You were so obnoxiously cute at that age.”

            Matt sighed. There was no winning with his lunatic stepfather. He really should never, ever introduce him to Foggy. Even knowing his roommate (friend? Friend.) for the short time he had, Matt was 99% sure such a meeting would only end in chaos.

            Think of the roommate and he shall appear. Matt could hear Foggy’s footsteps, familiar now, coming up the hall.

            “My roommate’s back, talk to you later?”

            “Sure. Maybe I’ll have found the perfect dog by then.”

            “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

            He hung up before Clint could get in the last word.

            Foggy came through the door just as Matt was getting up to plug in his phone.

            “Hey, Matt, guess what I got?”

            Matt sniffed the air, making sure the motion was as dramatic as possible. Mostly for affect but also because he still wasn’t 100% sure he could trust Foggy with the enhanced-senses-I-can-tell-everything-about-you-based-on-how-you-smell-and-your-heartbeat thing quite yet.

            “Ramen,” he concluded, based on the crackle of plastic packaging, the overwhelming scent of sodium and fake chicken powder, and basic logical reasoning skills. “And…avocados?” He left out the fact that he could smell the bananas, apples, and oranges too.

            “They had this whole thing of half price fruit and yeah, most of it was bruised as hell, but I’m broke enough not to care. You?”

            “I’ll give you a dollar and my soul for one of those oranges.”

            “Deal. Although hang on to that soul thing, dude, don’t want to give that up too early, never know when you’ll need to sell it off in the future. I hear student loans get you as soon as you get out of this place.”

            Matt didn’t mention that his inheritance money from his dad (untouched all these years, his dad’s life in dollars and cents and didn’t that put a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes), combined with his scholarship from the school would cover almost all of undergrad and that he had a good shot at a full-ride SHIELD scholarship for grad school if that was where he wanted to go.

            Instead he just shrugged, “Whatever, I’ll get you coffee tomorrow. Just toss me an orange. Don’t want to get scurvy.”

            Foggy laughed, “Hey, I’m gonna throw it over to your bed, low ball toss, is that okay?”

            “Sure,” Matt shrugged. It gave him as good an opportunity as any to see how far he could push the I-kind-of-have-superpowers envelope before Foggy freaked out or asked questions.

            True to his word, Foggy threw the orange underhand, very gently. Matt caught it in midair, over a foot away from his bed, not bothering to turn his face in its direction (why bother, it’s not like he was using his eyes).

            “Dude, cool. How’d you do that?” Slightly elevated heartbeat, but no sweat, no scent of fear…surprise. Okay, surprise was workable.

            “I listened for it. Everything makes sound when it moves through the air, you just have to focus to,” Matt made a vague, wiggly-fingered motion with the hand not holding the orange (yeah, it was old and a little dinged up, but still smelled fresh and good), “Sense it,” he finished lamely.

            Foggy paused a moment, absorbing things and Matt tensed, not sure what to do, missing the visual hints that might have clued him in once upon a time.

            “Dude, relax, I’m not going to reach for the holy water or initiate operation witch hunt,” Foggy laughed a little, uncertain, “You okay? Your face was all,” strange currents in the air and the sound of movement, Foggy must be making some vague gesture of his own.

            “Wounded duck?” Matt offered, uncertain.

            “Sure, let’s go with that,” Foggy laughed, “I swear, Murdock, I’ll never live that down as long as you’re around.”

            “I live to serve.”

            “Shut up, you’re apparently some sort of flying-object-sensing ninja, which you did _not_ mention at orientation and I am miffed, Murdock, miffed.”

            Matt laughed at his huffy tone and tried to imagine what his friend must look like right now, right at this exact moment. And the image just sort of…slipped away. Matt was having a harder time keeping faces in his head for very long anymore. They just didn’t look like that to his anymore. His was a world in four dimensions and the more time passed, the more two-dimensional every image that came before became.   “Just because I can catch an orange?” He asked, trying to reclaim that playful tone from only a few seconds ago.

            “Because you can catch and orange _in mid air_ , before it even reaches you, which I definitely can’t do, by the way, so no fair, you continue to be excellent in all things – ”

            “Uh, Foggy,” Matt turned his attention away from peeling the orange to wiggle the glasses on the bridge of his nose.

            “Shut up, and stop that smirking.” Foggy was laughing. Matt smirked harder. “So, if you can catch fruit in midair just by, I don’t know, _listening,_ I’m betting you can do other, cooler things.”

            “Um, yes?” Matt attempted. This was turning into the weirdest I-have-superpowers confession ever.

            Foggy must be grinning, because the next words he said were sort of warped, “Dude, we are going to _kick ass_ once there’s snow on the ground.”

            “Um, why?” Matt really needed to get in control of his vocal interrupters. The ‘ums’ were becoming problematic.

            “Two words, buddy: _snowball fight_. They’ll never see it coming.”

            Matt laughed until tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes and stained his cheeks with salt.

…

            “So what all can you do?” Foggy asked. It was a week or so later and they were just drunk enough and the night was crisp and cool and it was really nice sitting here, under this tree…somewhere on campus.

            “What?” Matt asked eloquently, turning his head to face his friend and nearly face-planting in his jacket. “What?” he asked again, voice muffled by the fabric.

            “Like, with your super-powered orange-catching ninja skills? What can you do?”

            “’Sss got nothin’ to do wif oranges,” Matt mumbled into the coat.

            Foggy jostled his shoulder lightly, “Ninja powers. Spill.”

            “I just hear everything and smell everything and feel everything. Like, a dog. Like, a dog hears way better than a person, and smells better and I dunno about the feeling, but I think their skin is sensitive or somethin’ because they’ve got fur. To protect it. Yeah. So I’m like a dog. In a human body. Who can’t see.”

            Foggy nodded sagely. “Cool.”

…

            The next morning they woke with ice-pick-through-the-brain hangovers, somehow back in their dorm rooms. Although apparently in the drunken confusion that was the night before, they’d gotten mixed up accidentally fallen into each other’s beds instead of their own. Foggy was still mostly asleep curled up on Matt’s silk sheets…and Matt was on the floor because apparently in his sleep he’d crawled out of Foggy’s bed to escape his sandpaper sheets and was now realizing that the carpet was even more horribly abrasive and he kind of wanted to peel off his skin, run away and never put it on again.

            That did not make sense.

            “Dude,” Foggy mumbled at him, “College parties suck.”

            “Yeah.” Matt couldn’t decide which sounded worse: the movement of sitting up or staying with his face pressing into carpet that felt like steel wool.

            A few moments where Matt struggled not to find the sound of his own _breathing_ offensive to his own hyper-sensitive ears and then Foggy said, “Hey, did you really tell me you were a ninja dog last night?”

            “You’re the one who keeps saying I’m a ninja. I just have dog-like super-senses,” Matt sighed into the carpet because he was too hung over for anything but the truth.

            “Oh. Okay. Can you turn off the sun? I’d like to get some sleep.”

            “Ha. Being able to see must suck.”

            “Laugh it up, fuzzball,” Foggy blearily quoted Star Wars at him and Matt would have thrown a pillow at him but the horrible steel-wool carpet seemed to have adhered itself to his face like the spikey side of Velcro.

            More not-talking and then Foggy spoke again, “College parties suck,” he reiterated, “Wanna go to the next one?”

            “Sure.”

            Why not? He was on the floor, which was not spinning, thankfully, and apparently the sun was shining, and Foggy was okay with him being a little more super-powered than the average person.

            Life was pretty good.

…

            A few weeks and a few mistakes later, and “Hey, Mom, you know how you have this habit-thing of collecting idiots? Well I’ve got one for your co- colec- _collection_. ‘S name’s Foggy, he’s the greatest. Me too. I’m the greatest too. We’re the greatest.”

            “Matt, are you drunk?”

            Oops. Natasha sounded dangerous.

            Matt did the stupid thing. He hung up on her.

…

            He and Foggy woke up the next morning, hungover, in pain, at least Foggy was the one on the floor and Matt was the one in the comfy-ish bed… to Natasha standing over them, holding a water pistol. A water pistol that had, until a few seconds ago, held cold water. Which she’d shot at each of them.

            “This is unacceptable behavior,” she said tersely.

            “Mom?” Matt pawed at his eyes, trying to wipe the water out of them and not finding much success.

            “Get up. If the two of you are part of my idiot collection now, we’re getting brunch. And I’m teaching you how to not end up dead in a gutter.”

            “Mom…”

            “Uh, Matt, she’s giving us a look, like, a really scary look, and I have no idea who this lady is, but you keep calling her ‘mom’ so I’m gonna go with don’t sass her.”

            “Excellent. I like this one,” Natasha still sounded dangerous, but also like she was laughing at them behind her stern veneer. “Come along, get dressed. We’re getting waffles and learning about safe drinking habits.”

            “At least there’s waffles,” Foggy said philosophically as soon as she left, presumably to lurk outside beside the door and terrify the pants off of whatever groggy coeds were staggering around the hall at this hour.

            Matt cursed at him in Russian, rolled out of bed and went in search of pants.

...

"So, can you smell fear?"

"Yeah?"

"What's it smell like?"

"Really gross; why do you ask?"

"Because the ninja-dog thing from a few weeks ago still intrigues me."

"Oh. Um. I can hear heartbeats?"

"Um. Wow. Okay, this conversation got weird kind of quickly. What do you mean you hear heartbeats?"

"I mean I can hear them," Matt said testily, "and most of the time it's really awkward and annoying and sometimes..." He trailed off, uncomfortable.

"Sometimes what?" Foggy was not letting this go.

Matt buried his face in his hands like a child. _If I can't see you, you can't see me..._ but that didn’t really work right for a blind kid anyway, huh? "Sometimes I know when people are lying or scared or angry or excited or...whatever. Heartbeat and breathing patterns and sometimes smell if I can get it-" he sighed, irritated and defensive now for no good reason, "It really is like being a dog, okay? It's like being in a world full of humans who all _feel_ things but you were never handed the playbook and you can't fucking tell what they mean or why so you use what you've got and then people hate that anyway because it’s not fucking _nice_." Matt was out of breath now, shivering from the shouting. He didn't raise his voice much; it hurt him and his sensitive hearing more than it would ever hurt the listener so he just didn't. Just held onto his anger until he could get home, hang up the punching bag in the living room and take out his frustrations on canvas and sand.

"Okay, hey, I'm going to touch you now..." Foggy was tentative, his heart falling into a sad-anxious putter-patter Matt didn't like but was too frustrated to apologize for.

"I know that, I can hear you moving towards me," he snapped instead because why not continue the Matt Murdock Cycle of Fuck-Uppery?

"Okay, we'll explore what you can and can't sense later, but _I'm_ kinda sensing you're wound a little extremely tight right now, so we're going to hug in a very manly-comfort-y way and you're going to calm down because I have been told my numerous sources that I am a super-hugger, and then we're going outside and having breakfast with your scary mom because she's still out there and she's terrifying."

"Terrifyingly awesome," Matt muttered in Natasha's defense, but gladly accepted the hug when offered. He may have melted into a little bit. A lot. Okay, a lot. Like a chocolate bar left on a leather car seat on a bright summer day. But Foggy was right; a hug did kind of make everything better.

…Until Natasha rapped on the door with her knuckles, saying “Come on, boys, I want waffles. You take any longer and you’re paying.”

“Your mom always this generous?” Foggy said wryly, letting Matt go. Matt kind of missed the security of human contact.

“She’s Russian, it’s a thing.” He said simply instead of ‘please hug me again; no one warned me that going off to school meant missing hugs like dieters miss donuts’.

Natasha took this moment to mutter something at them in Russian that Matt’s brain just decided it was too hungover and emotionally exhausted to translate.

Matt grumbled something vaguely similar to ‘calm down, mom, we’re getting there’ in Russian at the door before opening it.

“Morning, sunshine,” Natasha said dryly.

“I am never drunk-dialing you again.”

“Hmm? It could have been worse,” she pointed out, “It could have been Clint.”

She was right. It could have been worse.

…

            After a late morning/early afternoon of wildly unhealthy breakfast food and surprisingly reasonable advice from Natasha on drinking habits (“I’ve given up on either of you appreciating quality alcohol before you’re 30, so how about I teach you how to drink without killing yourselves, okay?”), Matt and Foggy, still mildly hungover, stumbled back to their dorm room after bidding Natasha goodbye. Matt was pretty sure he’d surprised her by going for the hug option as he bid her farewell. (“This is new, Polygraph,” “I just missed you, Mom. Don’t read too much into it.” “Hmm.”).

            Now he and Foggy had each collapsed back onto their respective beds to recover from the Natasha experience (and the pounding headaches behind their eyes).   Going out in public after last night was hell on Matt’s senses, but Foggy had done a good-ish job leading him, neither of them ran into a lamppost, and Foggy’s performance as a guide had been enough to push him over the edge into the (miniscule) category of People Natasha Allowed Near Their Family. This ultra-exclusive category had up till now, only included the people actually _in_ the family (which was small enough to begin with) and Phil, who was sort of already on the outer orbit of the family unit to begin with.

            Matt decided to tell Foggy this; this seemed like something that he’d appreciate. “My mom approves of you,” he said, not sure if he managed to imbue the statement with quite enough gravitas.

            “Cool.”

            Nope, not enough gravitas.

            “No, seriously, this is important. My mom doesn’t approve of anyone. She’s skeptical of the _president._ Basically the only people she trusts are me, my step-dad, and Phil.”

            “Phil?”

            “Uncle-ish. It’s complicated.”

            “Your family confuses me.”

            “Your family confuses me,” Matt shot back, a little miffed.

            “No, that’s different, there’s just a lot of us, and you can’t keep the names straight, don’t give me that face, Murdock, it’s true. With you guys it’s like there’s fewer of you, but you make up for it by having super-ambiguous identifiers. Like an uncle-ish. Who has and uncle-ish person?”

            “Me.”

            “Um. Buddy, I think we’ve established that. I’m just saying. It’s like you’re all in a spy movie and you’ve been assigned a cover as a suburban family but none of you can remember who’s supposed to be related to how and someone ends up making out with the person who’s supposed to be his ‘sister’ because he read the brief wrong and thought it said ‘wife’.”       

            If it weren’t a wasted gesture, Matt would have stared at him incredulously. Wasted gesture or not, Matt still pointed his face in Foggy’s direction and let it emote as it saw fit. “What? How do you come up with this stuff?”

            “Too much TV as a kid,” Foggy quipped.

            “Ah.” A period of dead air where Matt tried to ignore the fact that he could hear and smell someone vomiting down the hall. The girl from room 232 again, he should get Foggy to slide the business card for student health services under her door. Whatever was up with her, she needed help. “I don’t have a sister. Or a girlfriend. Fake or otherwise.”

            “Excellent. You won’t blow your cover then.”

            “I’m not a _spy_ , Foggy.” _Just my parents are._

            “That’s what all spies say,” his roommate pointed out, but he was laughing as he said it.

            Matt snorted, “I’m adopted,” he confessed and wow, that was not where he saw this conversation going, “It’s kind of why all the family identifiers are weird. My mom adopted me when I was ten, and I don’t have any blood family so her friends just sort of became my family too? It’s weird, I know.”

            “No, man,” Foggy sounded serious now, sincere, “no, that’s actually really cool. Sorry for making fun.”

            Matt snorted, “No, that’s fine. It was funny. I appreciate it. It’s nice.”

            Foggy snorted, but the levity was back in his voice when he said, “Okay, Mr. Glutton for Punishment, you asked for it. I’m gonna have to torment you now. My little sister’s back home, I have to have a substitute victim.”

            Matt laughed, “I don’t know, I’m pretty hard to torment.”

            “Dude, you confessed to super-senses, I have all the power now.”

            Matt groaned theatrically “I knew that was a mistake.”

            “ _Or_ ,” Foggy sounded positively gleeful, “I could just play ‘Stacy’s Mom’ every time you enter a room.”

            “What? Why?”

            “Because, you, my friend, are Stacy.”

            “What?!”

            “I’ve met your mom now, it’s useless to argue. You, my friend, are Stacy.”

            “You’d better not take this where it sounds like you’re taking it!”

            Foggy hummed contemplatively, “You know…”

            “I told you not to hit on my mom!” Matt protested. He vividly remembered it, too, it was about a week into their semester when he’d taken Foggy aside and warned him.

            ( _"Okay. You're going to meet my mom eventually. Don’t question it, just know it will happen. She likes being unpredictable. Just remember one thing: Do Not Hit On My Mom. I don't care how difficult it is; resist. No hitting on my mom."_

_"Okay, okay, I get it. You're protective of your mom."_

_"That's really not it.")_

Foggy laughed, “I’m kidding, I’m kidding, calm down, Matty. Honestly, though, I am kind of regretting swearing on my life, sanity, and all things I hold sacred, not to hit on your mom."

Matt stared at him, uncomprehending.

Foggy laughed again "Still kidding, still kidding; I'm pretty sure she'd kill me with a shoe or something if I tried anything."

"She wouldn't need a shoe,” Matt muttered darkly.

"...Buddy, your mom is terrifying."

"And awesome."

"Totally awesome. Can I be her when I grow up?"

…

In many ways, Matt Murdock was ill-equipped to cope with the Real World. For the past eight years this hadn’t been as much of a problem as it may have seemed due to the fact that Clint and Natasha, in their different ways, were not particularly prepared to deal with the Real World either. But now, far away from the safety of their little apartment and it’s surrounding rooftops, Matt found himself feeling more and more frequently like life amongst civilians was a class he’d somehow failed to take the prerequisite for.

            And while most of the time it wasn’t an issue, Matt kept his head down and his mind sharp and contented himself with casually fucking up the grading curve from his quiet little corner in the back of the classroom, he still sometimes felt like the punch-line in a culture-clash-themed comedy. That was not a comfortable feeling.

            “Dude, when do you _sleep_?” Foggy asked one night, sitting across the room with an abandoned textbook lying on the edge of the bed, threatening to slip off as its owner flipped through something with smooth, slippery pages (a magazine? a comic book?).

            “At night?” Matt asked quizzically, head tipped to the side, eavesdropping in spite of himself on the argument two girls were having on the other side of the wall at his back.

            “Yeah, got that part,” Foggy said dryly, “But how much? Are you okay?” Concerned. Foggy was…concerned. About Matt’s sleeping patterns.

            “Most nights I get a full five or six hours,” Matt said, still puzzled.

            “And you seriously think that’s enough? Matt, that’s not healthy. There have been _studies_.”

            Matt shrugged, “No one in my family sleeps much.” Between PTSD (diagnosed or otherwise), his parents’ crazy work schedules, and Matt’s senses providing him with an unasked-for barrage of information no matter what the hour, five hours of rest swiftly became the industry standard for ‘a good night’s sleep’ in their household.

            Foggy made a worried noise but didn’t press further, “Just…be careful. Wouldn’t want you passing out in class, might give professor Blackstone a heart attack.”

            Matt snorted, “She’ll live.”

            “Yeah,” Foggy chuckled, “Through sheer, vindictive meanness. She’ll live.”

            And that was that for a time. Foggy still made worried noises at Matt when his roommate seemed to be on the verge of collapsing or flying apart into a thousand jittery, over-caffeinated pieces, but generally he left well enough alone. One of the many hundreds of reasons why Foggy was the best roommate Matt could have ever asked for was the simple fact that Foggy never really questioned his idiosyncrasies.

            Of course, everyone has limits.

            Apparently Foggy’s limit involved a black eye.

            “Matt.”

            Matt paused, turning away from closing the door behind him, whatever words of greeting he might have tossed over his shoulder dying in his throat. “Yeah?”

            “What the _hell_ happened to your face?”

            “Oh,” Matt shrugged, “Someone punched it.”

            “Someone punched it. Well great, Matt, real enlightening that, not concerning at all – ”

            Matt furrowed his brows, wincing as the motion tugged on his tender eye socket. Yeah, he probably shouldn’t have eaten the peas he normally kept mostly-frozen in their crappy mini-fridge last weekend. In his defense, it was three in the morning at the time and he was _very_ hungry. Unfortunately, his former midnight snack would have been the perfect ice pack for his rapidly swelling face. “In my assailant’s defense, I was trying to stop him from stealing someone’s wallet.”

            Foggy didn’t have a ready response for that. They just sort of stood there, Matt awkwardly stuck in front of the now-closed door to their room (the door that part of him really wanted to open and flee out of), Foggy standing mostly in front of him, probably frowning. He seemed to be frowning.

            One moment, two, then, “HAVE YOU COMPLETELY LOST YOUR MIND, MATTY?”

            “No?” now it was Matt’s tuned to frown, “It don’t see what the big deal is. I figure it’s kind of my job to stop petty crime if I hear it.”

            “ _What?”_

“Wouldn’t you?”

            “Well, yeah, if I saw a person getting mugged I’d step in, but Matty, you told me you can literally _hear everything_ , so forgive me if what I’m inferring from this conversation is that my best friend is chasing down muggers and getting in fights with petty criminals on purpose like some kind of vigilante Batman.”

            Matt shuffled his feet, “I’m not _patrolling._ I’m not _Clint_ – ”

            “Your stepfather is vigilante Batman?!”

            “No. Yes. It’s complicated.”

            “I’m face-palming right now, if you couldn’t tell.”

            “Ah, no I could hear that.”

            “Great.”

            “Kind of like a sad hi-five.”

            “Got it, Matt.”

            Another non-verbal moment where Foggy’s heart hammered a strange off-tempo beat and the adrenaline slowly leeched out of Matt’s system.

            Matt was considering speaking, on the verge of saying…something, he wasn’t sure what, when Foggy heaved a sigh. “Matt.”

            Matt went cold. He sounded resigned. Foggy sounded resigned, and he had been very unhappy with him, was this the beginning of the end he’d predicted at the beginning of the semester? Because now that it was here, he really, really didn’t want it to be.

            “I’m sorry,” Matt blurted out because even though he hadn’t been the little boy swallowed up by loneliness in the too-empty, yet too-full halls of the orphanage in a very long time, that feeling never completely faded.  

            Another sigh: “Seriously? You’re seriously apologizing for stopping a mugging and getting hit in the face? Matt, you need therapy, kind of a lot. And yeah, I’m kind of mad at you for apparently spending your spare time running around disrupting petty crime and getting smacked around by assholes, and I’m seriously concerned about the adults in your life. But you probably shouldn’t be apologizing for doing a good thing. I’ll kick your ass for getting hurt and scaring the shit out of me later, when you’re looking a little bit less pathetic.”

            Matt blinked, pulse still staggering with the force of his fear. Fear that his newfound best friend would leave because Matt wasn’t normal, his family wasn’t normal, and the stuff they did just because probably wasn’t okay in the real world. “Are we,” Matt licked his lips, nervous, his subconscious stalling, “Cool?”

            “Therapy. Lots and lots of therapy.” Foggy was pointing at him, but it didn’t seem aggressive or angry, and his heart-rate was drifting towards normal, “But yeah, we’re cool.”

            Matt nodded, “Okay. Do we have any frozen anything in the fridge?”

…

            “Apparently casually stopping petty crime isn’t normal,” Matt said apropos of nothing when Clint finally picked up the phone.

            “Did you think it was?” Clint said, skeptically.

            Matt just sat there, silent.

            “You are one special snowflake, kid,” Clint chuckled, “Nope, it’s not normal. It’s just what we do.”

            “Why?”

            “Because we’ve got the skills and other people don’t and it’s our job to give them a fighting chance, am I right?”

            “Mom doesn’t do it.”

            Clint snorted, the sound crackling and distorting in the phone’s speakers. “You’d be surprised. But no, she doesn’t wander the city breaking up stuff before it gets ugly like I do. She’s a bit more ‘circle-of-life-this-is-the-Pridelands’ about it. Your mom’s a lot more practical than me.”

            Matt wasn’t sure what to say next. He had questions. He wanted advice. But asking it was a bit beyond him at the moment.

            “Listen, kiddo, just because you’re my kid doesn’t mean you need to be like me. No, random acts of vigilante justice are not ‘normal’. But I know there wasn’t ever a guy who stood up and said ‘no’ and stopped the cycle of violence when I was little and couldn’t stop it myself. And now I’ve got these skills, and my bow, and a chip on my shoulder, so I might as well put them to good use. I’m not going looking for trouble. Most of the time. I get kind of bored when your mom’s out of town. But the point is, if I find someone who needs help, I help them.”

            Matt sighed, “But Clint, I hear all of them. All the time. They all need help.”

            “But do they all need _your_ help?”

            “What?”       

            “Just remember you’re a person, and there are other ways of helping people. Me, I’m just a dumb jerk with a bow and some fists. You, you’re a smart kid, you’re going places. You’ll be able to do a hell of a lot more than me someday.”

            Matt hummed uncertainly.

            “Know your limits and prioritize, kid.” Clint sighed, “And I’m all out of sage wisdom for like, the next hundred years, so how about we talk about something slightly less important than your physical and emotional well-being, huh? Oh, and don’t tell your mom about your black eye, you know how she gets.”

            Natasha’s version of ‘worrying’ translated mostly into never ending bouts of training to make sure such an injury never occurred again.

            “Yeah. So, did you get a dog?”

            “Nope, but I’m still holding out hope that’ll happen.”

…

            Matt wasn’t supposed to hear this conversation, he was pretty sure, no, positive, that Foggy had timed it so it would happen while Matt was off at class. Unfortunately for Foggy’s attempt at discretion, Matt’s class got off half an hour early. Hence why he was sitting out in the hallway, eavesdropping on his roommate and his stepfather’s conversation.

            “Who the hell are you?” Clint asked, although it came out sounding far more muffled and half-gargled than that. He must have just woken up. He had come home from a mission last night at 3am. It was 3pm now. Natasha was still out of the country, so Clint must have been catching up on much-needed sleep.

            “Why the hell would anyone think it was a good idea to teach their stepson that vigilante-ing is a good idea?” Foggy sounded indignant. It was strange to have someone so angry on Matt’s behalf. Not bad, necessarily. Just strange.

            “Hey, I never said that. And who the hell are you?”

            “Foggy, the roommate. I stole your number off Matt’s phone.”

            “Hiya Foggy,” Clint still sounded groggy.

            “Why the hell would you think that vigilante tendencies were a good thing to pass on to your progeny?!” Foggy was getting eloquent. Foggy was upset. Matt wondered if he should intervene.

            “I didn’t pass on any vigilante- what-now. I am not awake enough to get yelled at by a teenager.” A jaw-cracking yawn and then, “Okay, kid, now I have coffee. Now I can listen to you. Or better, you could listen to me. Here’s the deal. Matt, Natasha, me? We’ve all seen some shit in our lives. The universe has taken its sweet time kicking the crap outta us periodically. The upshot of that? Well, we could be completely unfeeling robots jerks, or we could take what skills we’ve got and try to help some people out who’re being kicked around by the universe right now. Because we made it, we’re home free. I’ve got a good life, a badass wife, and a great kid. But the people who’re still out there, getting kicked around by the universe? I should probably protect them, so they can get a chance at their good life, right?

            “I never wanted Matty to be like me. I mean, I’m pretty damn awesome, but I don’t need a mini-me. I need a kid who thinks for himself and does the right thing, no matter what that is. And I trust my kid to think about whatever he’d doing, and do the right thing. And yeah, I worry too. But I can’t tell him he isn’t allowed to choose what to do with his life, can I?”

            Foggy sighed, “I’m worried about my friend.”

            “Human nature. We worry about people we care about.”

            “Yeah, well, it sucks.”

            “People suck.”

            Foggy snorted a laugh, “Yeah, sure.”

            Matt smiled to himself and wandered off down the hall. All was well.

…

 

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title is from the song 'Foolish Games' by Jewel.


End file.
